August 20, 2026
Website Redevelopment & Content Strategy
Submitted To:
Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children
Laurie Demko, ldemko@idahoaeyc.org
Submitted By:
Rise X Shine
Demetrius Goosbey II
The Challenge
Idaho AEYC strengthens the systems supporting Idaho families, child care providers, and communities through family resources, early learning collaboratives, policy engagement, and partnerships. The current website (idahoaeyc.org) serves as the central hub connecting families seeking care, policymakers shaping early learning policy, donors funding the mission, and providers building careers, ensuring every audience finds what they need.
Based on the RFP and our review of idahoaeyc.org, we’ve identified the following challenges:
The site has distinct audiences, but the content is intermingled (especially on the homepage), forcing each to wade through the others' experiences. This causes friction and fatigue, potentially causing visitors to jump from the site before reaching their desired content.
Design system usage and brand-alignment is inconsistent. Choice of links and buttons does not align with user behavior best practices in leading the decision-making process, including informing visitors they are leaving the main site when clicking a link. Use of colors, fonts, and other visual elements, do not align with an established pattern, preventing visitors from understanding the purpose of the assigned colors and hierarchy of the content.
Collaboration between Idaho AEYC website and social platforms may be limited. An initial review of social media content reveals limited cross platform content collaboration, potentially affecting SEO and limiting traffic to the website. The social links in the footer do not direct to Idaho AEYC’s social media accounts.
Timely content is buried. Access to latest blogs and events is difficult to find affecting visitor engagement.
Accessibility issues are present due to color contrast, hierarchy confusion, missing alt text for images and color contrast issues.
Idaho AEYC's RFP describes a full redevelopment led by strategy, not just a visual refresh. That is the kind of engagement this process is built for.
Our Recommendation
Rise X Shine proposes an 18-week engagement to redevelop Idaho AEYC's website, prioritizing research and content strategy over a surface-level visual refresh. Our two-phase Rise/Shine process begins with audience research, personas, and information architecture to resolve the site's core problem: intermingled content across five distinct audiences. Shine translates that research into wireframes, a documented voice and tone guide, and a clickable prototype, then builds a Framer CMS site with all required features—ELC interactive map, donor portal linkage, blog, events, embedded video, GA4 analytics, and an SEO baseline audit—plus hands-on staff training before launch.
Agency Overview
At Rise X Shine (RXS), great digital experiences happen when human insight, creative content, and intelligent technology work together. Our process has two phases: Rise, where we uncover cultural insight and strategic clarity, and Shine, where design, content, and AI-assisted production bring it to life. The result is a site that is easy to use, performs well, and provides communities the resources needed for children to thrive.
How We Work
Our process moves through a two-phase approach, each translating a research or design task into a decision your team can act on.
Rise
Business Goals & Brand Strategy: Translating your objectives (family trust, provider engagement, donor confidence, policymaker clarity) into a strategy that defines what the site must achieve.
Platform & Content Audit: Assess existing digital platforms and content to understand the current portfolio and use cases
User Research: Understanding how families, policymakers, donors, partners, and providers actually think, feel, and behave, grounding content decisions in evidence instead of assumption.
User Personas: Profiles of your priority audiences, used to keep content, navigation, and tone relevant to each one.
User Flows: Mapping the path each audience follows to find a resource, apply, donate, or contact your team.
Functional Requirements: The required features and sections and align with user behaviors for accessible and efficient site experience.
Information Architecture: Organizing pages, menus, and content into a structure that reduces friction, including the required features: About Us, Family Resources, Early Learning Collaborative, Donor Portal, Fundraising, Events, Provider Resources, and Blog.
Shine
Wireframes: Page blueprints that set content priority and layout before visual design begins.
Content Creation: Writing page copy that carries the business goals, brand strategy, and research findings into real language for each audience, so every page reads as clear, strengths-based, and true to how families, providers, donors, and policymakers actually think and search for what they need.
Prototypes: A clickable version of the site your team can test and react to before development starts.
Usability Testing: Watching real users complete tasks on the prototype to catch friction points early.
Accessibility & Usability Optimization: Applying accessibility standards so the site works for users of all abilities.
Launch & Continuous Improvement: Launch, then ongoing testing and refinement based on analytics and user feedback.
Team
Role
Demetrius Goosbey II, Strategy & Design Lead
Focus
Leads brand strategy, UX/UI direction, and advisory throughout the engagement, supported by a network of design and development specialists brought in by phase.
Bio
Demetrius is founder and executive creative director of Rise X Shine Digital, a boutique agency serving mission-driven organizations. He previously helmed Mathematica's in-house design and experience group, growing contract work 90 percent while building UX/UI, content, and data design capabilities. He directed digital engagement platforms at LiveHealthier that reached 80 percent participation rates. His nonprofit and education client work includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National 4-H Council, HUD, and USAID. He brings over 20 years of experience in human-centered brand strategy, UX/UI, and content governance.
Kwame DeRoche, Content Partner
Leads the content audit, voice and tone development, and page copywriting, working directly with Nicole and Sheralynn to align content with each audience.
What do pie filling, a 225-lb quarterback, and an IUD have in common? Kwame. Unlike some marketers, he doesn’t dig one hole 100 feet deep. He’s got 100 holes, each one foot deep. He doesn’t pigeonhole himself as a “sports guy,” a “pharma guru,” or a “D2C rockstar.”
A quick study, Kwame has gotten up to speed and created award-winning B2B and B2C content for everything from Lucky Leaf (he doesn’t bake) and the Jacksonville Jaguars (not a football guy) to Mirena (also not a woman in need of an IUD). It’s a skill that not only makes him easy to plug into any marketing situation, but also provides a huge base of ideas and perspectives to add to any project. From print and outdoor to social and experiential, Kwame delivers fresh thinking and relatable approaches that connect not only with each audience, but with their core ask: 'What’s in it for me?”
Ishmael Sunday, UI Designer
Develops visual design, wireframes, and the prototype, translating the information architecture and content into the site's look and feel.
Ishmael Sunday is a multidisciplinary designer with six-plus years of experience spanning real estate, financial services, education, and apparel retail. He most recently served as sole product designer on a Web Design System for the Liberian government, independently handling UX research, UI component library development, and accessibility standards across five-plus government platforms. His freelance work as Product Owner/Designer for Kofa Goods has focused on checkout and navigation flows that improved engagement and task completion. He holds a BA in Graphic Design along with certifications in Product Management, UX Design, and Agile Foundations, and brings hands-on fluency in Figma, WCAG accessibility standards, and front-end fundamentals (HTML/CSS/JS) to every project.
Related Work
Additional Relevant Clients
Gates Foundation
Branding, Information Design
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Content
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Information Design
Feeding America
Content
Scope of Work
Our approach to each area of scope, ordered to match Section 6 of your RFP.
Website Strategy & Advisory Support
Audience-specific site sections: The homepage will focus on overall timely news and organizational level content. Information for audience-specific resources will reside in their relevant site sections.
What content should and should not be included: the content audit and card sorting research in Rise gives a keep, cut, or rewrite recommendation for every existing page, mapped against your five audiences.
Tone, clarity, and audience alignment: editorial style guide established through personas and user flows so tone decisions are grounded in audience research and consistent across all content.
Simplifying and streamlining content: is a direct output of the content audit, not a separate exercise; every page gets a specific recommendation.
Navigation, structure, and user flow recommendations: come from the Information Architecture step, addressing the RFP's "too many pages and links" pain point directly with a simplified sitemap.
Working closely with your internal team: RXS will work directly with Nicole, Sheralynn, Adrian, and Kate throughout the engagement, not only at kickoff, with scheduled review points at the end of each phase.
Content Development
Writing new content and refining existing content: RXS leads all new and refined page copy, drawing on the personas and research findings from Rise.
Shaping messaging for families, donors, policymakers, and partners: messaging is drafted separately for families, donors, policymakers, and partners, using the persona work from Rise so each audience sees language suited to how they actually search and read.
Clear, accessible, strengths-based content: every page follows a documented voice and tone guide built from your organizational strengths and outcomes, replacing internal-facing nuance with plain, external-facing language.
A consistent voice across pages: the voice and tone guide is a standing deliverable your team keeps after launch, so consistency does not depend on any one writer.
Website Design & Development
Visual content and UI design will align with the Idaho AEYC brand.
Modern, accessible, mobile-responsive design: delivered through template wireframes and a clickable prototype that aligns with the brand work currently conducted with another vendor.
Initial recommended templates
Homepage
Site section & subsection
Content page
Blogs
Events
Bios
Campaign landing page
Clean, intuitive site architecture: comes directly from the Information Architecture step, built to reduce the page count and confusion named in your RFP.
Integrating required features: addressed feature by feature as seen below.
SEO and AEO best practices: includes a baseline SEO and AEO audit of the current site in Rise, so improvement is measured against a real starting point, plus on-page SEO built into every template.
Analytics tools for tracking user behavior: implemented through GA4, with a reporting cadence set alongside your team.
Staff training: hands-on CMS training is scheduled in Phase 5, before launch, so your team can manage the site independently from day one.
Required Features
Feature
Homepage
Approach
Rebuilt from the content audit to leading with timely content and donation call to action
Template Type
Homepage
MegaMenu
Main dropdown nav with brief description text for relevant sections
N/A
About Us
Rebuilt from the content audit to lead with mission and impact.
Section
Family Resources
Reorganized under the new information architecture with plain-language navigation.
Section
Early Learning Collaborative
Introduce content type labels and icons to indicate the type of education resource (PDF, video, event, etc.)
Include an interactive map for childcare centers
Section
Donor Section
Streamlined content that allows donors to access payment portal with less friction
Section
Fundraising Information
Consolidated onto a clear, donor-facing page as part of the content audit.
Campaign
Events
CMS-managed events listing, structured during Information Architecture.
Events
Child Care Provider Resources
Reorganized as a dedicated section for provider-facing content, separated from family-facing pages.
Section
Blogs/Child Care News
CMS-managed template with an editorial calendar and ownership defined in Phase 2 (see Section 8).
Blogs
Embedded Videos
CMS-managed embeds, staff-editable without a developer
Embedded in page
Interactive Maps
Delivered through the Early Learning Collaborative map build, using a staff-editable mapping library.
Embedded in page
Showing Impact & Updating the Look
Cutting content solves clutter. It does not solve a site that undersells what Idaho AEYC actually does, which the RFP names as a separate problem. We address this directly in the content strategy phase: pulling program reach, outcomes, and family and provider stories into a small number of high-visibility spots (homepage, About Us, program pages) instead of leaving them buried in text. This is a content decision as much as a design one.
Your brand is the DNA of site design
Because your brand affiliation audit is still underway, we build the design system on flexible, token-based components, colors, type, and logo lockups kept separate from layout and content. Once your brand work is complete, we can complete the overall site design, aligning the design system with brand components
CMS & Technical Approach
Item
CMS
Recommendation
Framer CMS. Framer provides an efficient, high-performance foundation for AEYC's content and audience-facing needs; select features (ELC interactive map, donor portal) will be implemented via custom code components and third-party integrations within the Framer environment to meet full functional requirements.
Hosting
Framer-native hosting, included with the platform. Framer handles infrastructure, SSL, CDN delivery, and uptime as part of its managed service, eliminating the patching and server-maintenance overhead of a traditional self-hosted CMS.
Donor Portal/Payments
Continued linking out to an external vendor is recommended for security, compliance, and record keeping purposes.
Embedded Video
YouTube or Vimeo embeds managed through the CMS, so staff can add or swap videos without a developer. Confirm during discovery whether an existing channel (noted on your current site) should be the source.
Blog/Child Care News
A Framer CMS-managed blog template with defined categories and an editorial calendar set with your team, so posting cadence and ownership are agreed before launch, not left open-ended.
Security
Platform-level SSL and infrastructure security managed by Framer, plus role-based CMS permissions and version history for content changes. Because Framer is a managed platform rather than a self-hosted install, there's no plugin or core-software patching required — reducing a common ongoing maintenance burden for nonprofit sites.
Analytics & SEO
GA4, plus an SEO baseline audit of the current site (current rankings, indexing issues, page speed) so improvement can be measured against a starting point rather than claimed in the abstract. Framer's on-page SEO tools (auto-generated sitemaps, meta fields, fast load times) built into every template; reporting cadence set with your team.
Interactive Map
A mapping library (Mapbox or Google Maps) for Early Learning Collaborative locations, editable by staff without a developer.
Proposed Timeline
We propose an 18-week engagement, sized to comfortably meet your December 31, 2026 deadline with room for review cycles. This is a working estimate based on the scope described in the RFP; it will be refined once we've reviewed your current site and content in detail.
Target
End of Week 4
Milestone
Discovery complete: goals, research, personas, flows, IA approved
End of Week 9
Content audit and voice/tone guide delivered; priority page copy drafted
End of Week 12
Wireframes and prototype approved
End of Week 16
Site built in staging with required features integrated
End of Week 18
Usability and accessibility testing complete, staff trained, site launched
Budget
The budget is allocated across four phases, weighted toward research and content work, since that is where your RFP identifies the core problem.
Phase
Phase 1: Goals, Research & IA
Brand alignment, user research, personas, user flows, information architecture
Allocation
$12500
Duration
Weeks 1 to 4
Phase 2: Content Strategy
Content audit, voice and tone, page copy for priority pages
$13000
Weeks 3 to 9
Phase 3: Wireframes & Prototypes
Page blueprints, clickable prototype, stakeholder review
$15600
Weeks 6 to 12
Phase 4: Build, Integrations, & Launch
CMS build, donor portal sync, interactive map, analytics/SEO setup
$3800
Weeks 16 to 18
Training
$1200
Creative Assets
Images, Videos, Audio
$2000
Annual CMS/Hosting License
$1080
Year 1 Total
$49180
About 18 weeks
Post Launch Consultation
RXS can provide consultation on the site to ensure it retains the professional standards
$150/hr
Idaho AEYC's site challenge is mostly about clarity: what to keep, what to cut, and how to say it. That is the work this process is built to lead. We welcome a follow-up conversation to walk through specifics.
Contact
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